


i should live in salt (for leaving you behind)

by newsbypostcard



Series: Precipice [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You think my dying was me <em>leaving you</em>?” Jim says, once he’s found his feet again.</p><p>“No thinking required,” Bones tells him; “that’s what it was.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	i should live in salt (for leaving you behind)

**Author's Note:**

> This has been bumming around on my Drive half-finished for two years, and it was time to get it off. It's a bit of a "fic dump" in the sense that I'm still trying to get my feet wet in this fandom and with these characters again, and in the sense that the _Beyond_ trailer is out and Justin Lin has advised us to largely ignore STID going forward. That means I gotta shovel all this deathfic off my drive so we can all focus on the true and real canon fact that Jim never died and Leonard is still whole, right?? RIGHT.
> 
> Since this is part of the Precipice series, you can assume that this deals heavily with Jim's death and subsequent revival. Also mentions Tarsus IV. There's no sex, but there are a lot of tough existential questions here, so I labeled it Mature; if you're a teenager it's probably fine but fluff does not this way lie. Previous parts in the series not required to understand this one.

  


Sometimes, Jim forgets.

Sometimes he forgets about Tarsus. That one’s the easiest -- being half a life away makes all the difference. Jim’s circumstances have improved so much that it doesn’t even feel like the same person who experienced all that. Now he’s the youngest captain in the fleet; now he runs Starfleet’s flagship; now he has a crew he cares about and a mother he can hold a conversation with and -- though he can hardly believe it himself -- a steady thing going on with his CMO. These are all things he didn’t have going for him back then. In the midst of all the adventures and trials, it’s easy to forget the months of famine, even as he stares down the lines of hungry officers in the mess--

\--at least, that is, until he hears the news about the ongoing atrocities in the outer systems. 

Watching the news gets hard in a hurry. He’s forced to wonder how many are suffering while those closer to home are enjoying the luxury of tech, particularly once he digs around in the back end of Starfleet servers to realize that there isn’t anyone posted out there. He’s forced to think about who the hell is doing anything about that suffering, then, as he realizes Starfleet is still trying to get back on its feet after exorcising the corruption out of its ranks; before he recalls that the fleet is still compromised from a year and a half ago when it was all but decimated in the Battle for Vulcan; before he remembers that he’s part of the problem, carrying through Starfleet’s bullshit Prime Directive when he should be out there doing something about it.

Then, he remembers Tarsus. He remembers it _a lot_.

But sometimes, he does forget.

Sometimes he forgets, too, about the details of the Enterprise’s maiden voyage. He shouldn’t, he knows; but he sometimes his mind does manage to skip over the fact that his first sojourn into space had resulted in the loss of hundreds of men and women who fought for Starfleet; who arrived at Vulcan only to be destroyed in seconds flat; who were only a fraction of the true collateral given the billions lost on Vulcan itself. 

Then, of course, he attends briefings with Spock Prime and Sarek on how best to convene the Vulcan diaspora, in collaboration with Starfleet, now that New Vulcan is getting on its feet. He watches the Spocks give each other a wide berth, unsure of what to say to each other in the face of such tragedy and at the risk of such undesirable timeline disruption; and in these moments, he remembers everything with potency. He realizes the degree of the loss of life he witnessed on that day, and he wonders _how_ he could ever pass over his history, _how_ he can wander through his everyday life as though he did not witness the murder of _billions_ , for a single second of his life.

Although, he figures, Spock must forget, too, sometimes. He _must_.

It’s hard to tell for sure, now that he’s, quote, “choosing not to feel”. Jim forces himself to quit overthinking the issue before he boggles too hard on just how the hell _any_ living creature can claim that he’s done with the feelings, now, thank you very much; and so he’s left to wonder if the ease with which he is able to carry on his days, without thinking about how this very ship’s legacy is forever tainted with the blood shed when Vulcan fell, sets him apart -- from Spock. From Uhura. From the crew at large.

Jim occasionally forgets, too, about the former Admiral Marcus; about the corruption of Starfleet; about the loss of Pike and half the Earthbound authorities on the day Khan had set them a trap. Sometimes he forgets about the very near loss of his crew at Khan’s hands before he’d found a solution; sometimes he forgets about the lives that _were_ lost that day, before finally he’d offered up his own. 

But less often, lately, does he forget about these. They stick in his chest in the same way his own beating heart seems to; they each have in common the fact of being something Jim will never again take for granted. 

There are gracious moments where his mind slips sideways and he remembers what carelessness feels like. These moments usually come when Bones’ hands are ensuring he’s being “taken care of,” in both the medical and decidedly more carnal senses of the term, and he’s occasionally able to slip into blissful ignorance in the rare spare moment he allows himself to stretch out and lose himself in an old movie on holo. 

But mostly ... mostly, this stuff he remembers.

Some days he even forgets that he died.

It’s like a blip on the radar: a memory that Jim fixates on only occasionally, and only for just long enough to figure out whether it really happened. It’s never long enough to let it consume him. His disengagement has allowed the sequence of events to become hazy, like something surreal or long-buried; his comprehension of it is now mostly informed by the testimony of others rather than by his own memory. Jim remembers enough to wish that he didn’t, though, and so forgetting is his preferred state; and what he does remember isn’t enough to totally trust his perceptions of what he thinks did happen, anyway. So trusting others to carry the memory forward on his behalf seems like the best plan for everyone. That suits him fine. If Uhura badgers him to get a grip on what happened for his own sake, Jim would posit that she doesn’t know the first thing about it and leaves it at that.

(In fact, among the crew, only Scotty seemed to have had the right idea, once Jim had exited at long last from hospital and landed in the nearest bar. “Who in their right mind would really want to remember the sensation of dying?” Scotty had loudly proclaimed on their third drink in; and Jim, thinking that was actually a really good goddamned question, and stopped asking questions about it from that moment forward.)

Jim makes a _point_ of setting these memories aside, unlike the others, and that makes this ‘forgetting’ different. He wants to, he _should_ , remember Tarsus and Vulcan and Marcus -- but this, he does not need. When the memories try to stick at him, when the sound of his own rattling breath as his body breaks down echos in his mind, he makes a point of shaking himself loose from it. There’s no fucking point to this. 

And as long as he doesn’t seek them out, he finds he actually can often operate as though it never happened. So what if he is constantly aware of the heart beating in his chest in a way he didn’t remember it doing before? Maybe he is constantly reminded, sometimes every day, that he feels entirely as though his resumed state of animation is completely unnatural. But other times, life is busy enough to let him forget about it completely for weeks at a time. And for that, Jim is grateful.

But Bones -- Bones never forgets.

There are times when Bones’ touch is too fixed on his form, his fingers digging deep into his skin as though to make sure he is still warm, still here, still alive. Sometimes his hand settles under Jim’s wrist, applies gentle pressure, feeling out the pulse of his veins even as he can see Jim plainly animated beside him. Sometimes Bones turns Jim’s face against his skin when they’re in bed together, tries to get some part of him under Jim’s nose or Jim’s mouth, and it’s only then that he seems to go back to sleep, content only with the feeling of Jim’s breath against his skin.

Then there are the times when Bones’ touch is absent, and these times tell just the same story. Those moments when Bones’ hand freezes or grips with some memory that Jim doesn’t have access to; when he pulls away and folds into himself; when his expression flickers away into forced neutrality, neither snarling nor entertained, and something in Jim’s chest hardens into stone--

Yeah. Bones remembers, all right.

But, true to form, they don’t much talk about it. From time to time Bones sits bolt upright right out of a dream, and Jim wakes up enough to tell him it’s fine, he’s fine, they’re both here and they’re fine; and Jim knows, from the way Bones’ hands settle back over him, what it was he was dreaming about. 

But there’s not much to talk about, after all. They both know the score. Jim died. Bones brought him back. That was the way of things. Just like Bones would never really forgive Jim for dying. Just like Jim would never be able to take it back. That was the way of things, too.

At least, until it isn’t. At least, until they do talk about it. Until they have to, or they’ll fall apart.

And that moment -- is now. Bones is so obviously unsleeping by Jim’s side that Jim actually wakes up with the force of Bones’ insomnia. Jim blinks himself blearily to life; and there he is, wide eyes staring at him or through him, only for them to flit away to the ceiling once imprinting Jim’s wakefulness upon them.

Jim grunts, nuzzling against the side of Bones’ face. He wraps his arms around Bones before he has a chance to roll out of bed; and he folds into him, shapes the both of them, sets his mouth gently against Bones’ forehead.

“What’s up with you?” he mutters, knowing but asking anyway; and as his lips brush over Bones’ skin, Bones’ hand alternately flexes and tightens over his ribs, as though trying to figure out if this is a moment best spent touching him or withdrawn.

“Dream, I guess,” says Bones.

“Tell me about it.”

Bones makes some overtures at avoidance, shifting and muttering noncommittally, but Jim only tugs him closer, hand settling over Bones’ torso. “We’re never gonna move past it if you don’t talk about it, Bones.”

Bones grunts and leans into him incrementally, as though helpless to the warmth of his form. “Oddly insightful coming from you.”

“I’ve recently come into some firsthand knowledge of the intricacies of life and death,” Jim tells him. “Pardon me if I gleaned some wisdom from the experience.”

Bones seems to test the strength of his fingertips against Jim’s skin, applying gentle pressure, before then easing off and pressing in again a moment later. Jim lets him test, lets him move -- knows in that moment that he’s making sure Jim is really there beneath them, present and tactile and warm and alive. 

“It’s just … you, on the other side of this pane of glass,” Bones says quietly, after a long, straining pause. “No button, no seam. Can’t pull the glass away. Can’t break it. You’re dying, and then you’re gone, and I can’t get to you.” The fingers at Jim’s shoulder briefly tremble, then steady with the application of pressure, following the planes of his shoulder blades, tracing the lines of his skin. “I can’t get to you.”

Jim closes his lips over Bones’ skin, presses them there again and again. “But you did get to me, Bones,” Jim says.

“No,” he breathes, the voice dying in his throat. “No, Jim. I brought you back. It’s not the same thing.”

Jim starts to understand, then, what it is that keeps Bones awake; it’s not exactly that Jim _died_ , but more that he died so _quickly,_ so _easily,_ without even giving Bones the chance to find him before it happened. 

“I’m sorry,” Jim says eventually, the words sticking harshly in his throat.

The thing is -- he means it. Even if he does stand by every part of what he’s done, he’s still sorry to have caused _this_ , this fallout of a different sense, to have created a wound within Bones that isn’t so easily healed.

But instead of acknowledging him, instead of acknowledging the rare apology that’s tumbled from his lips, Bones just hooks his arms around Jim’s shoulders -- as though barely allowing himself a moment of solace, of refuge, in him -- before he pushes himself away and off the bed.

Jim watches him and his halting movements, some low pulse of dread solidifying in his throat. He sits up to watch as Bones rifles around for clothing, and it’s not long before whatever Bones was feeling has hardened into something else. “You’re angry,” Jim remarks quietly -- an accusation often uttered but rarely affirmed. 

Bones keeps his back turned, true to form, opting not to look at Jim. His shoulders stay square and tight, the blades of them jutting out one after the other as he moves things pointlessly around atop the dresser. 

It’s as though Jim hasn’t said anything at all.

Jim knows Bones is angry. In that sense, there’s no need to acknowledge it. But just the same, Jim knows he’s going to lie about it, anyway.

“I’m not,” says Bones, at last, after a too-long pause. He ferociously de-wrinkles a pair of uniform trousers and pulls them on.

The lie hangs in the air, coating the room, wounding them both.

“Come back,” says Jim.

“I’ve got a shift,” says Bones.

Jim blinks and shakes his head. “You do remember I’m the Captain of this vessel? I know when the shift changes are, and this isn’t one. Come on, Bones. Are you gonna talk to me, or are you gonna run?” 

At this, Bones finally glances at him, expression somehow shut down and blown wide open at the same time. “You mean like you?” Bones says, voice caught in some chamber deep in his throat; and while Jim stares in stunned silence, Bones only pads silently away, steps into the bathroom, and slides the pocket door delicately shut.

Jim throws himself backward on the bed, arms spread wide on either side of him. He stares at the ceiling as though beseeching it to give him answers, if Bones won’t. He can picture what he’s doing based on the sounds of his movements -- brushing his teeth, washing his face, searching around for a razor -- and he thinks about what he can do to fix this.

What he can do to bring him back.

Because this? This kind of thing -- Jim has a really hard time forgetting about. And that makes him remember the other stuff, which just… won’t…

He can’t.

“Bones,” Jim says, when there’s a lull in the noise.

“Yeah,” says Bones, because he’s too used to replying to stop himself in time.

Jim curls into himself, just briefly. “Don’t go without talking.”

“Jim.” Bones sighs. He does not continue.

“I -- I get where you’re coming from.” Jim rouses himself from the bed and feels around for his discarded sweatpants with his feet. “I get that this is hard. But--”

Bones offers only a hollow laugh. The door to the bathroom is still closed.

“I don’t think _anger_ is justified,” Jim tells the door, fumingly.

“Oh, don’t you?” There is a bite there, now, something that hits Jim in the gut and then falls to the floor.

“No. I don’t. I don’t think you’re thinking things through far enough to realize--”

“So this is _my_ fault?”

Jim rolls his eyes. “I mean, kinda, yeah, if you keep hiding from me like this.”

This, at last, leads Bones to throw open the bathroom door. He looks faintly deranged, his face half-covered in shaving salve, one eye popping menacingly out of his head. “ _You’re_ gonna lecture _me_ on hiding, there, boy?”

And just like that, Jim rises to meet his tone. “Okay, fine! You wanna do this? Let’s do this. Sometimes, sure, I run. Okay. But I’m not hiding _now_ , Bones. I don’t do those things with you.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so. Where’s this coming from? I wanna talk this out, for serious.”

“There’s no _talking this out,_ Jim boy,” Bones tells him. He returns to his furious shaving, shaking his head. “You left. Suppose I should be grateful that you’re back. Duly noted. I’ll get right on that.”

“I -- _left_? I didn’t _leave_ , Bones.”

“What in Sam Hill do you call dying, then? Shore leave with notice? Hospitals and coffins don’t count for shit.”

Jim blinks dumbly. “Bones.”

“You _left_ , plain and simple. My taking it upon myself to bring you back isn’t the same as you sticking around.”

“Whoa.” Jim steps forward, shaking his head, hand outstretched -- but Bones shoots him a venomous look out of the corner of his eye that effectively stops Jim dead. “You think my dying was me _leaving you_?” Jim says, anyway, once he’s found his feet again.

“No thinking required,” Bones tells him; “that’s what it was.”

“Okay. Wow." Bones' belief stings him -- soaks into him like honey, thick and glossy, slowing him down. "We … gotta unpack this, Bones. My death had nothing to _do_ with you.”

“Yet there I was, left to clean up after you, left to drag you back into this world whether you wanted to come or not...”

 _How fucking long has Bones been hanging onto this shit?_ “I was _saving lives,_ Bones, not _killing myself_. How many times do we have to do this?”

“You want to talk, let’s talk.” Bones throws his razor down into the sink; when he turns to face Jim, several nicks are obvious on the far side of his face. “You died. You left. Simple.”

“Okay.” Jim takes the few short strides to where Bones is standing, but Bones only pushes past him and re-enters the room at large. “Bones.”

“When’s the next time you leave gonna be, Jim? What signs should I be looking for here? Should I be keeping a vial of superhuman blood around all the time just in case you manage to ‘save the ship’ again?”

“Bones.”

“You know what, you’re right. Other people have left. Ma. Pops.” Bones waves a hand in the air; Jim can guess the other names from that list he doesn’t want to say. “You’re the only one I had enough skills to bring back. You get the brunt of my anger because you’re the one it actually worked on. That’s on me. I’m sorry for bringing you back, Jim. I’m sorry we’re both suffering for my hubris.”

Jim can hear his own heartbeat again -- loud and clear and angry. “Back up, Bones, please, okay? I get that you’re upset, but don’t -- start saying shit like that. We have to go back. We have to start from the beginning.” He breathes; sets the tips of his fingers against the palm of his other hand, in case it might give him stability. “You know that -- what I did -- was the only way _anyone_ aboard the Enterprise survived, right? You know the reason you’re standing here is because I ‘left’?”

“Convenient excuse,” Bones snarls, pulling a shirt furiously over his head.

“Okay.” Jim blinks back his anger. “Well, if you’re not willing to accept reason, let me break down your own hypocrisy a bit here. Do you remember, not too long before I saved everyone’s asses by walking into that warp core, when you went and got your hand caught in that missile? You were all, ‘save Marcus! carry on without me!!’, and yet I don’t get to be a prick about that, do I?”

Bones blinks furiously. “That was diff--”

“It wasn’t,” Jim bites immediately. “Not at all. I almost lost you just the same as you lost me, and you know what? Now that I think about it, I get where you’re coming from, because remember how, once your self-deprecating ass got back on the ship, I had to -- I had to check, that you were still there?” Emotion balls unexpectedly in Jim’s throat; he takes a second to breathe furiously in Bones’ direction, matching his fury with ease. “Do you remember, Bones, how I took you aside, into your office, and had to check that every inch of you was intact? Remember how I patted you down, took you in, made sure that you were warm and alive and fine the same way you always do with me?”

“Jim, that--”

“And remember how, once we’d gotten through that; once we’d gotten the making out and life-affirming sex thing out of the way -- and this is crucial, Bones, so pay attention -- we _found a way to move on with our lives?_ ”

Bones’ chest is heaving, his fists clenching at his sides. “That wasn’t the same, Jim.”

“No? Why the fuck not, Bones? I _legitimately_ thought I’d lost you. Do you not get that, or doesn't it count?" Jim shakes his head. "I was standing there on the fucking _bridge_ listening to you telling me to save Marcus and leave you to _die_. I had to listen to you ask me to make that call as your _captain_. I braced for the fucking _worst_ , and I decided to risk _both_ your dumb asses, because that was a better thought to me than actually giving the order that would have killed you.” Jim has to lean against the nearest surface to keep himself upright with the force of keeping his voice remotely even. “And when the door finally opened to let you go, I almost _collapsed_ , right there, on the goddamn _bridge_ , in front of my goddamn _crew_ , not only because I’d almost _lost you_ , but because you asked me to kill you _myself._ So don’t tell me--”

“ _It’s not the same!_ ”

“--that you would’ve done anything differently if you’d been in my position. If I’d taken Carol out of there--”

“My almost-dying and your actual-dying-for-three-weeks are entirely different things, Jim!”

“--I’d have fucking _killed you,_ Bones!” That does it; his voice breaks into a scream with each syllable, and Bones finally shuts up and blinks at him. “You wanted me to take her out of there and let you die -- you actually _told me_ to _let you die_ \-- and you wonder why I didn’t ask for you while I was dying? I knew what living through your -- someone’s very last moments were fucking like, Bones. I’d done it with you. And I wasn’t gonna put you through what you tried to put me through.”

To this, Bones has nothing to say; he only fumes, fists clenched, as Jim takes a second to breathe. “And who would’ve brought _you_ back, huh, Bones?” Jim manages eventually, voice kept low by the choke in his tone. “It would’ve been way more fucking permanent without you around to stare down the motherfucking grim reaper, let me tell you.”

Bones is shaking his head, his jaw clenching, his brow folding and unfolding like a fucking accordion. “None of your conjecturing equates to my finding your lifeless body on my autopsy table, Jim.” His voice is likewise boxed away and held in constraint, and this, for some reason, is Jim’s last straw.

“Fuck! Bones!” He tugs at his own hair, his distress forming manifest. “Did you ever _stop_ and think for a _second_ that I was the one who _actually died?_ ”

Bones falls abruptly silent, as though having been struck. His eyes widen; his shoulders collapse onto his back; his mouth closes slowly, lips slack, with the force of Jim’s words.

They stare at each other, chests heaving in furious bursts.

“I thought--” Bones clears his throat. “I thought you didn’t -- remember -- anything about that.”

Jim shuts his eyes as tight as he can. HIs fists clench at his sides. “Look,” he begins again; he opens his eyes again to see Bones staring back at him with some raw expression that Jim’s never seen before. “I know that you were scared, and alone, and … I know that you don’t exactly have a lot of people to fall back on once I’m out of the picture.”

“Christ, Jim.” Bones’ voice would have splintered on impact. “Do you have to talk like that?”

“But you -- you have a fundamental understanding of -- of what radiation poisoning does to a person at that magnitude. You’re a _doctor_ , Bones, you -- you’re my best shot at understanding what happened to me that night.” Jim’s exhale is ragged; fear floods his system, suddenly, unexpectedly, and he realizes now, at long last, what it’s like to engage with these ideas head-on. All at once, it’s no longer surreal; it’s not something he’s removed from anymore. 

All at once, he starts to remember.

Jim’s muscles tighten, all of them at once.

“Nothing compares to _being_ that fucking body, Bones, not even looking down at it,” he continues after a moment. “But I’ve never ... had you to talk to about it. You’re the person most likely to understand when I say that it feels _weird_ to be alive, but I haven’t known how to--” He shakes a hand at his chest, as though to gesture vaguely at his heart, and swallows. “It doesn’t _feel_ right. It’s like this is someone else’s heart beating in here, or like there’s a fucking puppeteer somewhere that’s telling me when to breathe. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t -- know how to talk about that with anyone but you. But you don’t want to talk.” Jim shrugs, falling far too fucking short of nonchalance. “So I don’t. But the thing is, Bones, that it’s starting to get to me. I’m starting to remember--” he swallows-- “ _things._ So I need for you to not hate me anymore. I need you to find it in you to forgive me for dying, because I don’t know how to -- shoulder this -- by myself -- anymore.”

Bones’ face had been setting into some horrified forced neutrality, but the muscles in his cheeks, his brow, around his mouth twitch forcibly at Jim’s choked tone. “You--” Bones shuts his eyes, and suddenly every inch of his face collapses into something profoundly pained. “ _Jim,_ you have a shrink you’re supposed to --”

“Really, Bones?” Jim cuts off a terrified laugh. “The only thing that asshole wanted to talk to me about was my _dad_. All Dr. Starfleet wanted to hear was that I had a death wish, just like my dear old pops. So that’s what I told him. And guess what? It got me reinstated.” He sweeps his hands out beside him on either side as though to present himself for Bones’ appraisal.

Bones’ hands have flown up to cover his face. “You’re a goddamned fool, Jim. You’re a goddamned fucking fool.”

Jim gestures wildly. “What would you have had me say? Let’s say I tell him that it just feels weird to be alive. Just like that, in my juvenile ‘I have no fucking idea what’s going on’ tone of voice. You’ve got a psych cred, Bones -- how do you see that one going over?” Jim pauses to shake his head fervently from side to side. “I’d get a scrip for pills that letterbox the shit out of me. They’d stunt my emotional capacity, completely shoot it up, all in a misguided attempt at keeping me from leaping out of a moving shuttlecraft. You know as well as anyone that I need to feel to lead. Anything that would cost me my instincts would cost me my job -- their lives -- this ship.”

“I don’t think -- it’s that -- simple--”

“Ah, no? Tell me, what’s wrong about what I just said, Bones? Specifically. _Please_ enlighten me. Please, for the love of god, tell me where I went wrong.”

Bones only stares, silent, horrified, barely keeping it together.

“I tell him a lie, one the other hand,” Jim continues, fighting to keep his voice at an even register-- “If I tell him that I have a deathwish, that I wanna go up just like my pops when it’s in my record that I lost a parent as a child…” He shakes his head again. “You know exactly how well I know how to play the system. Starfleet can’t fucking handle the truth. You know as well as I do that the sort of shit docs would categorize as crazy is exactly what makes me the best damn captain this league has ever seen. So I don’t wanna talk to Starfleet. I'm never gonna _talk_ to them at all.” Jim feels the anger draining out of him at last; his breath starts to even out as he looks at Bones, if only out of exhaustion alone. “I wanna talk to you.”

Bones is looking at him with a distant expression of abject horror; it’s as though this is the first he’s really understanding the fact that Jim had, in fact, been the one who’d died. 

“I --” Bones begins; but his voice falters partway through the syllable, and he bows his head, looks at his feet. “There’s no … medical explanation for those sensations you’re feeling,” he manages eventually. 

Finally, at this, Jim feels like he might collapse at Bones’ feet for what the conversation’s taken out of him; he leans hard against the table beside him, and listens, his head bowed low. “Physiologically … you’re fine," Bones tells him. "Your vitals are stable every time I check, and I check … fairly often.” At this, Jim forces his head up to meet Bones’ eye again; they stare at each other, both of them as though appearing at a funeral. “There doesn’t -- seem to be any residual effects from Khan’s blood. If there is, my equipment isn’t sophisticated enough to sense it.”

The bitterness in his voice cuts through the tension, and Jim understands at once that Bones still feels that he has failed Jim somehow. “And psychologically?” Jim asks, when the silence stretches too painfully on.

“Psychologically… yeah.” Bones nods, his chin creased. “I mean, who the hell besides you has ever come back from the dead, Jim? There’s no journal I can read to help you. I’m out of my depth. But, yeah. You went through a serious trauma. It makes sense that you don’t feel ... quite right.”

“Right,” Jim says, and nods at Bones’ feet. “And there’s no… there’s no…” He winces and looks back up at Bones, a hand flying to the back of his neck. “You’re sure there’s no way that I was just … put back together wrong? Like, I’ve been through shit before, but this feels…” he shrugs and lets the hand fall back to his side.

“Uh, well. Yeah. Maybe.” Bones shrugs, too. The weight of their burdens is too much for either of them to stand, and yet here they remain. “You may be the first asshole to get brought back, but I’m the first asshole who managed to make it happen. The way you… I mean to say, what happened to you, to generate the…”

“Dying?” Jim provides gently.

“Yeah. The… radiation… the way it ran you down, you might… have noticed your cells… breaking down. Your heart might have…” Bones shuts his eyes, hard, and looks away from Jim. 

With a tightness in his chest, Jim realizes this is the first time Bones has bothered to think at great length about what actually happened to Jim since he was revived, too. “I get it, Bones,” he says. He can still save Bones from something. “Radiation breaks shit down. You might’ve put me back together, but that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to be whole.”

Bones nods, his eyes still shut. When he forces himself to look at Jim again, it’s with a strengthening intake of breath, as though using it as a boost just to make it to eye contact again. “I, uh, admittedly haven’t run... any tests on you on a cellular level since you... revived. Before that, sure, plenty. You got the gambit. But scanners don’t notice anything awry, and that’s all I’ve subjected you to since you … woke up.” He shrugs again. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t something going on. Cells might still be trying to figure out how to deal with the mutation reversal. It’s worth looking into. We can look into it.”

“Okay.” Jim nods stiffly. “Thanks.” It feels strange to hear it, the confirmation that he was once broken apart; that Bones put him back together in a very literal sense, to bring him to stand here, before him, in this room.

He’s not sure how he feels about it.

Bones looks at him like he doesn’t know how to feel about it, either. “It might be a lot of testing, Jim,” he says, quietly.

“Okay,” says Jim.

“Do you want to, uh… go into it… now?” 

“Not really.”

Bones nods grimly, his lips pressed into a thin line. “You never told me you were feeling physical symptoms, Jim,” he husks after a while.

“I didn’t know if they were physical or not. I guess I still don’t. It just feels _weird_ , Bones. It’s no big deal. It’s not like I’m struggling on a daily basis or anything.”

“It sounds like you’ve been struggling enough,” Bones counters.

“Not physically, at all. I can run as hard as ever.” He waves a hand in Bones’ direction. “I manage to take your dick on the regular without any problems. I figure not _too_ much can be wrong if that’s going okay.”

A smile cracks, just barely, at the edge of Bones’ mouth. “Jim,” he says quietly.

“That’s all. I, uh… thanks for listening, I guess.” 

Bones nods. “You got anything else you wanna yell at me for, while we’re here?” he asks, after a pause.

“Yeah, actually -- you leave your wet towel on the floor _all_ the _fucking time_.” Something quirks at the corner of Jim’s mouth. “I step on it in the middle of the night and it’s like a wet cat. You’ve gotta cut that out, I’m serious.”

“Jim.”

“Also, quit using up my hair wax? This--” he gestures to the part in his hair-- “is not working for me. You finish it, you replace it. I’ve gotta wait until we’re planetside again now; who knows when the hell that’s gonna be.”

“Jim.”

“Bones, I’m serious.”

“ _Jim._ ”

Jim’s grin flickers just briefly before he catches it. “What?”

“Don’t leave me again.”

It’s one of those things that leaves Jim floundering like he’s lost all sight of land.

“I’ll do my best, Bones.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I’m the captain of this vessel. You know the job.”

“Jim--”

“Look, I get it. You need me. Noted. Here I am. I hope it’s enough that I need you too.”

Bones blinks. “You -- what?” he snaps.

“I need you. To help me live with being alive.” Jim shrugs. “So I’ll stick around for a while if you will, Bones. You’ve already proven yourself the same self-sacrificial bastard that I am, so I’d argue that’s the best _either one of us_ is going to do. I’m here now, and I need you.” Jim reaches out a single hand and clenches it in the front of Bones’ shirt. He pulls him in, and Bones comes without a fuss. “That has to be enough.”

“It’s not,” Bones whispers; and then his hands are on Jim’s bare skin, gripping and flexing, to remind himself that he is still here. “It’s never enough.”

“It’s all we get.”

“I want a fucking refund on this Enterprise shit,” Bones bites harshly; but then his lips are over Jim’s, warmth and fervor and passion, and Jim can _feel_ the need, can _sense_ it as Bones forgives him, and Jim breathes and breathes and breathes it in, as though it might’ve been the last chance he may get.

  


  


It isn’t perfect, after that. 

But Bones does stand on the bridge again, which means he’s there when Jim pulls off one of his bullshit feats of escape that Bones chest-clutchingly discounts as sheer luck while Spock insists it is actually just an extremely unlikely, though technically possible, maneuver.

“Jesus Christ,” Bones bites under his breath; and when Jim turns to him with the grin of a man who’s faced death and won, Bones shuts his eyes tight with the knowledge of the inevitable dialogue that will follow.

“Are you referring to _me_ , Bones?” Jim says, sing-songingly.

“No. Do not--”

“A new nickname?”

“ _Jim--_ ”

“Now, now, Bones. It's Jesus now.”

“Oh, brother.”

“I think I get it, Bones. Everything that's happened this year; it's clear to me now. I’m the second coming. I can't believe I didn't--”

And it’s one of those moments where JIm forgets, while Bones remembers; and when Bones’ indignant expression drops into horrified regret at the recollection that Jim ever died in the first place, Jim doesn't even hesitate to be the one to reach out instead.

It's _Jim_ who takes _Bones’_ wrist between his fingers, then, settling over Bones' pulse with the ease of someone who's watched it done a thousand times; and then, in ignorance to whatever else is happening in the cabin, he _holds_. Counts the beats of Bones’ heart. Reminds them both what it is for Jim to be alive at all.

And in these moments, Jim finds his own heart doesn’t feel so odd in his chest anymore.

So maybe they’ll learn to live with this -- to remember it -- together, after all.


End file.
